


A Pause in the Eye of the Storm

by KingofTerrors



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Point of View, Post Episode 14 of a Crown of Candy, Saccharina's POV, deep introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25370287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingofTerrors/pseuds/KingofTerrors
Summary: The Sugar Plum Fairy is dead, but all is not well. Saccharina takes a breath in the eye of the storm after her conversation with Ruby at the end of episode 14, and struggles to get a grip.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	A Pause in the Eye of the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> You ever have *feelings* about a character so powerful that you just had to examine them if you ever wanted to sleep? Saccharina has gathered her share of haters, but also her share of people who just don't understand where she's coming from. 'Why was she crying?' is the refrain. This is a deep dive into who Saccharina is, what she's feeling, and where she is as we move into the next episode. Just a chance to get into her head and do some serious reflection. Come suffer with me.

Saccharina looked down at her hands. They were shaking, she realised, distantly. It wasn’t the cold. Even the icy bitterness of these highest peaks of the Great Stone Candy Mountains wasn’t harsh enough to make her shiver. Winterscoop, leant against the frozen ice-cream mountainside behind her, radiated protective warmth. The rock on which she was seated, hard against the mountain, was rimed with frost, but she barely felt it.

No. It wasn’t the cold.

She glanced around to see the backs of her faithful marauders, each facing out into the slicing wind in a position of guard. As far as they were concerned, that meant guarding against everyone. There were no friends on this mountaintop anymore. Despite the fact they had fought together twice now, the Marauders and the Rocks Family were no longer on good terms. She had seen the way Jon Bon set himself as Ruby approached, the way Gooey hefted her axe. She knew that if she had spoken the word, Ruby would have been no more than a crumpled heap at the foot of the mountain by now.

She hadn’t.

The taste of adrenaline was acrid and bitter in her mouth. Her muscles ached, not from the rigours of the battle just fought, but from the rigid tension she had held during that last talk with her half-sister. It was necessary. Anything less and she would have lost control – that last tiny bit of control she had in the face of her ‘family’. Her birth family. Saccharina raised one trembling hand to her jaw, rubbing the muscles in an effort to relax and unclench them. Even with her best efforts, it had been a close run thing. Salt tears were frozen on her cheeks. She had nearly broken.

Even now the roiling waves of emotion within her had only abated a little. She remembered the soft touch of the spearmint druid’s fingers on her forehead, the wisdom in the woman’s gentle eyes as she spoke words of undeniable truth. 

“There is a storm within you. And thus there is a storm within the world.”

But there shouldn’t be! Wasn’t she the Sundae Sorceress, the Storm Captain of the Frosted Fleet? The storm should be hers to control, not something that raged despite herself!

She clenched her hands together, squeezing, feeling the nails dig deep. Why had she let herself fall to this? She knew better! She wasn’t a child anymore, to be carrying around this daydream, this fairytale of a loving family who would find her and sweep her away to the life she deserved. That had been beaten out of her long ago. Why had it had to re-emerge now?! She couldn’t get rid of it. It sat there at the back of her mind, just waiting for her to be tired enough or hurt enough or emotional enough before it jumped out to wrest control from her rational thinking. 

When she had learned that it was Amethar who had been caught in the mountains, she had known the right course of action. She knew well that a man who had disavowed any knowledge of a previous wife throughout more than eighteen years of marriage was not going to be overjoyed at the sudden discovery of a daughter. There could be no tearful meeting, no professions of familial love and affection. They were simply useful to each other in this strange new world brought about by the death of the Emperor. That would have to be the basis of any relationship they might build. That was fine. It was sensible. It was realistic.

And then they were face to face. Saccharina looked on the face of her father. She recognised the familiarity of the line of his jaw, his physical posture from every time she looked in a mirror. And she heard him speak.

“So… I’m looking at… my… my daughter.”

And in a second all that preparation, all that damned rationality shattered like ice under a hammer. That yearning she thought she had buried so deep she would never feel it again burst out like the sun coming up after a long night’s watch. It burned within her. The need to _connect_ with this man. To have a father. To have a family. She had been alone for so long. She thought she was used to it, that this was just the shape life had to be. And now there was hope.

Fucking hope. It was a curse. It brought nothing good. It tripped her up at every turn: spoiled the clever words she was trying to form, stirred up strong and confusing emotions, ripped away the veneer of control she had worked so hard to build up.

It wasn’t like she was blind to how foolish a hope it was. These people… her blood family… were exhausted. They had nothing to give. Working to build a relationship with a long-lost daughter? There was no way that was going to happen. It was all Amethar could do to put one foot in front of the other. Saccharina knew. She _knew_. 

But that hope wouldn’t go away. It wouldn’t shut up. It sat there… waiting. Waiting for a moment of weakness.

And worse… it made her _vulnerable_. Since her earliest memories Saccharina had been fielding insults and blows both physical and verbal, aimed at her for daring to be who she was, with the gifts that ran in her blood. She had learned to shed them, like water off oil-cloth. But this hope… it opened her up. Ruby’s childish slights and barbs should have been nothing, but each one lodged in her heart. A further push away from the connection for which she yearned. Worse, Amethar’s silence, his ambivalence… the times he called her ‘your Majesty’ with just a touch of something behind it. Was it sarcasm? Was it bitterness? She couldn’t tell, but it hurt. It hurt every time.

And now… had that confrontation with Ruby really ended any chance? Her Marauders thought so. Gooey’s words left her in no doubt. They would cheerfully have raised their weapons against the one-time princess. Ruby’s threat to push Saccharina into the deadly mist-filled abyss? That had been the first strike against her. Yes, they had been trading insults throughout the battle against the Sugar Plum Fairy, but Saccharina had thought that despite that they had worked well together. Ruby’s final killing blow had been magnificent, but without Saccharina’s help she would never have been close enough to deliver it. Ruby’s reaction against being reminded of this – yes, in a provocative and insulting way, but that was just the tone of every exchange they had had – was this threat. It was too much. Saccharina felt it, but her Marauders felt it more.

Then Ruby’s arrogant silencing of Saccharina’s Marauders when she found their speaking annoying? Well that had been the last straw. Saccharina could no longer stay quiet, or try to play Ruby’s game of needling exchanges. She had to speak plain and true. 

Gooey saw it. Gooey stored it away in her heart. And when Gooey asked to speak freely, Saccharina didn’t need to guess what her right hand woman wanted to say. Enough was enough. They all felt it. She had worked. She had fought for them. She had sidelined her own goals for the sake of theirs. And it had gained her nothing. No respect, no kindness, no recognition. Enough.

Or so she had thought. And then Ruby followed her, and spoke plainly for the first time in all the few days they had known each other. And that honesty, that plainness, that sincere attempt to extend just the slightest point of connection…? It had nearly broken Saccharina all over again. That _hope_ flared into life once more like an ember when breathed upon, and it opened her armour wide.

Would she ever be herself again with these people here? How many cuts could she bear before she collapsed? At least in the orphanage she had _known_ the hope was a fairytale. It was a dream that was never going to come true. Here it was torture. Here and now the dream felt close enough to touch, but never to grasp fully. If she had been on her own, Saccharina might have curled into a ball and sobbed. But she was not. Her Marauders were here. Amethar and his family were at the top of the mountain, no doubt preparing to make the descent just as she had done. She couldn’t show such weakness. She was a leader. She was a warrior. She was a queen. She was the Sundae Sorceress, and the Sundae Sorceress didn’t bend or break. She stood tall. She weathered the storm. She threw it back in the teeth of those who would subdue her. 

Saccharina climbed to her feet, straightened her back, raised her chin, every move conscious and tightly controlled. Her hand slipped inside her armour to feel the simmering heat of the dragon curled beneath her breastplate. Cinnamon was asleep, and his breath curled into steam with each gentle snore. Saccharina smiled. At least she had one more member of her family. Now there were two Frostwhips in the world.

She let her face settle into the icy mask of politeness that had been her armour across the years, and she turned away from the path back up the mountain where her blood family had yet to emerge from the temple. Instead she looked out, down the slopes toward Castle Many Licks, where the future waited. And deep inside her, the hope burned.


End file.
